Kinds of Pain
by Aiko Isari
Summary: [XW/HP] Part of Traditionalist. Ryouma often woke to the sound of his mother crying. Post Second Wizarding War


_**A/N:**_ Hi again! This was supposed to be really fluffy. Clearly, that didn't happen. Oops. I tried. Anyway, here is another Traditionalist story. Let's go! Please drop a review!

_**Challenges:** _Diversity Writing Challenge D82. Write a crossover, 28 Days of Love Challenge Day 3, and Song Time Challenge, for the song Click from Nisekoi. Surprisingly, it works to me.

_**Warnings:** _shonen-ai, PTSD.

* * *

_The war is over, in name._

Those are the words carved on their Western fireplace. Ryouma reads them over day after day, to practice English he hopes he never has to use. He's a half-blood, or a mutt, or whatever the term is to the West. To the Japanese, what only matters is his mother's blood, Chinese and horribly indecent. Nothing is said, he retains enough of his father's features that they don't notice unless she's beside him.

His mother has not recovered from the war.

As a child, all this means is that she cries a lot, that she goes to the doctor's often, that she lies to his father about being happy.

It means he walks out one day and she can't even protest.

She's a genius. He knows. When she teaches, Cho Chang comes to life in a way that hurts. It's sweet and earnest, but stern. His knuckles ache with the memory of her scoldings.

She's a genius and all he knows about geniuses is that they get broken a lot.

Some days she goes outside, but most of the time she studies, she works. She hardly looks at him.

He has to wonder if she hates him.

Then she brings him a friend, and he's not too sure anymore.

* * *

Kudo Emiri is the sun put into flesh. She's overwhelming, excitable, dragging his mother into the sun when she doesn't want to go. Her son is, by contrast, much quieter with his excitement. Ryouma thinks he's heard Taiki shout all of once outside of games and Core Hunting.

He doesn't even know where to begin with the hunting. His mother has not taught him a thing. His father couldn't and he wouldn't ask him anyway.

Taiki only pulls him through forests that reek of magic and creatures. There's always one in particular that nibbles at his ear, but Ryouma doesn't mind. He likes the thestrals.

It appears they like Taiki more on some days.

Taiki only shrugs. "I smell like my father," he says.

Ryouma frowns, because that sort of statement always makes his mother unhappy. She hears them from the trees, of course. No one would let their children run throuh woods full of magic unscathed, especially not a pureblooded mother.

Hearing sentences like that makes her cry.

He wishes she would stop.

It's not that she is weepy and it's bothersome. It's that it's scary. His mother scares him.

The war is over, in name.

* * *

She gets better over the years.

It's pulling teeth, but perhaps it's because he sees less of her than he used to. It's almost like sweet denial when she brushes his hair before bed or talks him through the creation of his Catalyst. (In the West they have wands, those seem to break easily.) The Catalyst Rings are a strong silver, weaved with kitsune flames over smoked wood and the heartstring of a dragon.

It's a little claustrophobic to wear them, if he's honest. Japan isn't a country for magic-users, not out and about practitioners like Britain seems to get away with. Taiki says they put lots of spells on, but isn't that wholly inconvenient? Using up that much magical power seems to defeat the purpose of being out in the first place.

He tells his mother this once, and she laughs. It's so rare to hear her laugh that he automatically wants to make it happen again.

"Yes, well, we're a bit behind," she says.

_We_, she says. Like she's still back in Britain. Like she's still a part of them. A part of the past.

Ryouma feels his heart sink, and polishes his rings again.

His mother kisses his forehead.

She loves him. She loves him.

He loves her. He thinks.

Maybe she hasn't taught him how to love.

* * *

He thinks his hero teaches him how to love instead.

Ryouma likes to think so, likes to think the fluttering in his chest and the easy comfort in the other's hands over his, moving him to correct his fighting steps with feather light taps is something like infatuation. Something past admiring a pureblooded boy with a heavy burden on his thin shoulders that still picks himself up and smiles it away again.

He likes to think it's love because Emiri pats his head and talks to his mother about magical theories and doesn't even stop them from going off alone into the misty trees.

He likes to hope it's love because he's not sure what love is and he wants it so desperately to be something good because the war is horrible and grief is horrible but love and grief both _ache._

He hopes his mother is good because war is evil.

* * *

Sometimes he wonders if he causes pain.

The Digimon are a part of their lives now and they're a part that he sometimes hates because it's another way he's special, that Taiki is special (it's good if he's special because he's incredible and kind and incredibly flawed with his own kindness.

When he wakes from the possession (Quartzmon is like a dream, a dream with blood and his best friend, the person he stares at with that horrible, stupid ache of like, falling in his arms like he's dying), it's utter hell and he has no magical energy left and it's left up to Tagiru, his rival, his friend.

His friend, he was in a war. It was a scary, horrible war and people died, he said. They came back, but they still died and that's a scar.

Ryouma waits for Taiki to start slipping down like his mother, like his mother when his father left and there was no chance she could return to the island of corpses and blood is invisible streaks on her hands.

He waits for the grief.

It never comes.

Instead, he is the mourner, practically the widower, and Ryouma hates himself because mother notices.

She notices and holds him and soothes him and all he can think is _where were you before now?_

_Did I get this breaking disease from you?_

* * *

He forgives her.

He forgives himself.

Neither come easy. Neither come gently.

Love is not easy, love is not gentle or sweet or warm but full of packages like rocks and bloody fingertips and laughter in salt water. It's long days and moments without breathing and feeling free.

Taiki does love him, he loves every piece that falls off and every bit of magic that he sometimes can't control. (Apparently you're expected to after childhood, that would explain the lack of explosions). He loves and he still scolds him because he's an idiot and he knows that and everyone knows that but he had to realize it.

Why is this all so complicated?

He forgives her, and it comes with time and understanding, because sometimes Taiki has his days of melancholy from death and others he's as happy as a child. That is his mother too, only now he can actually be here.

He doesn't wake to hear her cry. He wakes to hear her singing in English and talking to people through mirrors and with people in the once empty house.

He falls asleep to her praying and to Taiki translating in his ear and his heart is content and Ryouma doesn't think why, just thinks _yes._

The war is over.


End file.
